4 main theories behind who shot BBC star Jill Dando as Netflix series premieres
The murder of Jill Dando 24 years ago remains one of Britain’s biggest unsolved crimes.
The beloved journalist and Crimewatch presenter was found shot dead outside her home in Fulham, West London aged 37 in 1999. As Netflix today launches three-part series Who Killed Jill Dando? we look at the key players – and the main theories.
Theory one: Barry George
George was the only man to ever be put on trial for Jill’s murder. The loner lived near her home and had a history of stalking women and sexual offences. A search of his flat revealed part of a gun holster, a list of firearms, and news media coverage of Jill. There was also a photo of a man holding a handgun and wearing a gas mask, but George denies it is him. In the programme, George says: “I’d never met her in my life, didn’t know who she was. The police, over and over grilled me about it.”
A particle of gunshot residue in his inside jacket pocket led to a guilty conviction and he spent eight years in prison, but after an appeal spearheaded by his sister, Michelle Diskin-Bates, the gunshot evidence was dismissed and the conviction quashed. Top lawyer Michael Mansfield KC, who defended George, says: “The file should still be open. They should be looking.”
Barry George appears in the Netflix series (Courtesy of Netflix)Theory two: Criminal underworld
Of the many theories delved into, one is that Jill was murdered in cold blood by a criminal operating in the drugs underworld, or a paid hitman. Noel “Razor” Smith is a former criminal with 68 convictions and a journalist with Inside Time newspaper for prisoners.
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He was held at HMP Belmarsh in South East London at the time of the murder. Noel says in the documentary: “It takes a certain sort of person, a brutal, sophisticated psychopath to walk up behind a woman in broad daylight and point a gun into her head. I mean that is not something you do lightly. She was on Crimewatch and a lot of those criminals were in prison. It’s quite possible that it was one of them who did it. It looked like a professional job.”
Former prisoner Noel 'Razor' Smith thinks the murder was a professional job (ITV)Theory three: The Serbian hitman
Just 48 hours after Jill was killed, the theory appeared that the TV presenter was killed by a Serbian hitman. Twenty days before her death, she had presented a Kosovo Crisis Appeal that had raised more than £1million in 24 hours in support of those refugees fleeing the Balkans.
Days before the murder, NATO bombed a TV station in Serbia, killing 16 employees. Jill’s agent Jon Roseman said: “We had a lot of mail, but not usually threatening. Then we received a letter that mentioned the appeal she had given earlier that month for Kosovo. It seemed to be somewhat threatening.”
The BBC had started to receive phone threats, including one from a Serbian saying he had killed Jill. Police tried to investigate but the call could not be traced.
Theory four: The three men
The late journalist with Bob Wheaton (Courtesy of Netflix)Police turned their attention to those closest to Jill — mainly her fiance Alan Farthing, ex-partner and BBC editor Bob Wheaton and agent Jon Roseman.
DCI Hamish Campbell says: “The reality is most people are killed by someone they know. The people in her inner circle were her fiance, her former partner who had been her partner for seven years, and her business agent. They had to be seen and interviewed and eliminated primarily by alibi.”
At the time of her death, Jill was engaged to gynaecologist surgeon Alan, who was a doctor for the Royal Family, but he is not interviewed in the documentary. But Jill’s friend and hairdresser Martyn Maxey, the man responsible for her iconic “Diana” haircut, says: “When Jill met Alan it was quite a life changing moment for her, a moment that she’d thought about and had dreams of for quite a while.
“She’d announced her engagement, she should have been in the church getting married and here she was in a church being buried.” Alan was quickly ruled out as a suspect, but suspicion fell on the others.
Colleague Jennie Bond says: “Jill got involved with Bob quite early on and it was a difficult situation. You know, she was with the boss.” Then Alan told police that £35,000 had been given by Jill to Bob, so he was quizzed after the funeral.
Bob says: “You feel, gosh, the light is on me here. I said I was quite happy to explain. She had contributed towards me buying my house by the river. I said I could have covered the shortfall, but she wanted to share because we were then sharing the house together.
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“I showed police evidence that I didn’t need money that badly. She was generous to everybody, including me. We loved each other, I wouldn’t ever have thought of doing something like that. To have lost somebody with whom I had spent valuable, interesting, important and enjoyable years was a massive blow.”
Bob was removed from the suspect list and CCTV analysis revealed no one was following Jill. Jon, also later removed from the suspect list, had written a book about an agent whose client was shot and killed. The police took an interest.
“I was thinking ‘I’m in the twilight zone, you’re not taking this seriously?’ Yes I was really tough, but it was an act. Anybody who suspected I would cut off a financial revenue like Jill Dando’s would have been insane. I find her death still very difficult to come to terms with,” he says.
'They'll find my sister's killer'
Jill with her big brother and their father (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)Jill’s older brother Nigel Dando, also a journalist, recalls he was working at the Bristol Evening Post when reports came in that his sister had been killed.
He says: “I clicked into automatic mode and thought, ‘I need to protect my dad from this’. I rushed down to Weston-super-Mare, he was obviously devastated. I was wondering how we were going to cope. It was a sense of emptiness and despair. I had to explain to my dad what had happened, what was going to happen, that we were going to be in the eye of a storm.”
Nigel, who was nine when Jill was born in 1961, remembers childhood picnics on the beach, with “sandblown lettuce sandwiches”, not much money but happy times. He says Jill was destined to become a journalist –she was always “polished and professional while retaining a natural warmth about her”.
“The world was her oyster,” he says, adding: “I believe and hope that one day there will be an answer to it – when the police say they have enough evidence to nail Jill’s killer.”
'We had clues and witnesses'
Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell was on call on the day of the chilling murder. He remembers witnesses had seen a man leaving the scene, described as white, thick-set with dark hair, wearing a dark coat. DCI Campbell says: “All the resources came, the ballistics expert, the blood expert, the scene photographers.
“Everything had been picked up – scrapings, gravel, fingerprint marks, fibres. We had a bullet and a cartridge casing on the doorstep, possibly from a 9mm calibre weapon. The whole of her street, Gowan Avenue, was searched. Bins, gardens, flowerbeds, shrubs... Witnesses saw a man running and sweating. A traffic warden saw a man driving a blue Range Rover.”
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